OK so I get a technical magazine each month in the mail. There is an article which attracts my interest and a reference to a “InstantDoc” id so I can quickly get the supporting materials and the code from the web. Cool!
Step 1 - So I log onto the web site. First it tells me that I need to be registered. So I search my records to see if I have already registered and find nothing. Try to create a new registered user and it appears that I am already registered (OK so this was my bad for not recording my information in my secure ID/PW file.) So I try to get an emailed reminder and find that my registration has my old email address that no longer works. So an email message to the publisher asking them to change my email address. I never got a reply but checked again in a few days and could then send my current email address the reminder.
Step 2 – So I log onto the web site with my ID/PW and request the “InstantDoc” and up it pops. Nope. Now it tells me that I must associate my user name with my customer number. Where is my customer number? On the package that encased the publication which is, naturally, long in the trash. That seems like a reasonable place to put this number so I wait for the next issue to arrive…
Step 3 – My next monthly issue arrives and I save my customer label and head back to the web site. I enter my ID/PW and try to associate my customer number so that I can get my subscriber access to the “InstantDoc.” In response I get a message telling me that I need to contact customer support and get them to associate my ID and customer number. Off goes an email and the next day I get a friendly response telling me that the two pieces of information have been associated and am good to go.
Step 4 – Imagine my excitement. I log on to the site with my ID/PW, enter the magic “InstantDoc” number and…well I get to a page that has an abstract about the article but where is the additional information? I click the “subscriber only” link – nope that just give me the opportunity to subscribe to the publication (there is also another “Subscribe to …” link just in case I missed the first opportunity). How about the “Main article” link? After all the blurb with the “InstantDoc” did promise “an expanded version,” but no the same information on the web as in the print version. But wait there is a sidebar link surely that will give me the additional information? Again disappointment, it took me back to the initial abstract page.
I tried other links. I could get a listing of everything that author had written, a listing of similar articles, order reprints in various formats. I could Digg the article, add it to Del.icio.us, email it, print it, add a readers’ comment…lots of stuff but not what I was looking for - the expanded article and a download of the sample code.
Step 5 - Wait a minute. For safe browsing I use the Firefox extension NoScript I try turning scripting on and voila … another advertisement with the opportunity to subscribe to the print version AND for an additional $5.95 a month I can get a “Online Pass.”
Perhaps the information I wanted is there somewhere. Perhaps it isn’t. Perhaps if I were to spend the additional $s I could get access to the additional information. Perhaps I couldn’t. Perhaps there is something in the fine print in the publication or on the web site that would explain all of this. Or perhaps there isn’t. At this point I have been trying for a month to get the advertised “sample scripts” and it is just not worth that sort of time.
I get a lot of IT related publications at the Institute and this is not the first time that one of them has become more trouble than it was worth. Print publications are struggling trying to figure out how to survive in the era of free and bountiful internet based resources. I hope that they succeed because I actually do like and learn by reading what they publish. But in their struggles they are becoming more and more irritating making me much less likely to subscribe. So in their attempts to make their way in this new world they are driving off those of us who are supporting them.